Thief
by Layla Reyne
Summary: In their latest plan to restore Elena's humanity, the Salvatores turn to an unlikely ally – Katherine – who shares a certain "stolen" moment between her and Damon in an attempt to make Elena feel something again. One-shot; post-4X20.


**Thief**

**By: Layla Reyne**

**Summary: **In their latest plan to restore Elena's humanity, the Salvatores turn to an unlikely ally – Katherine – who shares a certain "stolen" moment between her and Damon in an attempt to make Elena feel something again. One-shot; post-4X20.

**A/N:** I'd actually started working on this a couple of weeks ago, and then with the latest 4X21 spoilers, I put it on the fast track. Enjoy ;)

_Much love to Sandra (dutch_treat) for her beta magic._

**Disclaimer: The characters and other things from The Vampire Diaries are not mine. All due credit to the rightful holders.**

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I can hear them talking from where I sit, tied to this chair in a Boarding House room we rarely use. The smell of my sun-scorched skin, one of the foulest odors I've ever known, lingers in the air, wafting under my nose, because my skin won't heal. I haven't had blood for days.

But I outlasted them. I knew that I would.

Maybe I wouldn't have, if it had only been Stefan. I may be void of my emotions, but I still have my memories. I know for a fact that he will let me die. But not Damon. Never Damon. He's made it his mission in life to save me, having failed on the two previous occasions when it mattered most.

Once on the night my parents' car went off of Wickery Bridge. He could have asked me to leave that deserted road with him, and I would have followed. And I know he wouldn't have killed me because I looked like her. My parents would probably still be alive. I may never have known Stefan, or at the very least, I would have known Damon first. I would never have lost my human life foolishly driving back to the wrong vampire.

Damon's act of kindness that first night we met had been the cruelest twist of fate. And then a year later, Rebekah had run Matt and me off that same bridge while Damon was a hundred miles away. He'd trusted his brother to keep me safe so that he could take care of Klaus and Ric, two men he thought were a greater threat to me. But he'd been wrong that night too. Fate had screwed him – screwed me – over again. Maybe he had been right that day he introduced himself to me at the Boarding House. Maybe we're just doomed.

The sound of the front door slamming shut snaps me from my fatalist musings. And then I hear her voice, the one that sounds like mine, except a little throatier, a little more manish. She was here the other day, boasting that she'd gotten rid of Klaus for good. But it's a couple of bloodless days later, and I can no longer make out what she's saying. Only that her voice is raised, as is Damon's. They're arguing, and I roll my eyes because that's all they ever do.

And then suddenly, there's a sharp prick at the back of my neck and I catch the faintest trace of Stefan's aftershave as blackness overtakes me.

When I come to, I'm back in the basement cell, but this time I'm chained to a chair that's been bolted to the floor. Lifting my head slowly, the first thing I notice is her stiletto boot, impatiently bouncing as it dangles in the air, hanging casually over her other knee.

"It's about time," she grumbles, uncrossing her legs and bringing both feet to the floor.

Raising my eyes to meet an identical pair of brown ones, a chuckle escapes my dry, cracked lips, because I'd never imagined a time when her eyes would be filled with more emotion than mine.

"They must be getting desperate."

"Nice job calling their bluff," Katherine replies, as she begins pacing back and forth across the tiny cell. "It was foolish of them really. You and I both know that Damon would rather die than let any _real_ harm come to those he loves."

The staccato tapping of her heels, combined with her grating voice, is more tortuous than anything I endured upstairs. "Then why are you here?" I ask, hoping she'll get to her point sooner rather than later.

"You're too much of a wild card now. And your friend Bonnie has something that I want."

Of course there's something in it for her. Katherine doesn't do favors, only self-interest. Doesn't matter, though. As she herself pointed out, I still hold the trump card. "But he still won't let you kill me. You don't scare me anymore."

Placing her hands on top of the chains that bind my wrists to the chair, she leans forward, bringing her face level with mine. "But you do _hate_ me," she says, cocking an eyebrow. "You hate me more than anyone else on this god-forsaken earth."

"Did you miss the part where I turned off my humanity?" I sneer, rolling my eyes at her. "I couldn't care less about you."

Katherine shakes her head, her perfect brown curls falling over her shoulders and bobbing in the space between us. "Liar," she scoffs, leaning closer, her nose less than an inch away from mine. "How could you not hate me after everything I've taken from you?"

Straightening up again, she resumes her maddening circuit of the cell. "One," she begins, holding up a finger, "I used your mother and got her killed by Klaus. Two," she continues, ticking off another finger, "I wrecked your relationship with Stefan. Three, I handed your Aunt Jenna over to Klaus for the sacrifice. And let's not forget," she says, stopping right in front of me and holding up a fourth finger. "I killed that annoying little brother of yours."

I can't contain the growl that wrenches itself from my throat, and that's when I catch the first glimpse of blue over her shoulder. Damon's watching from the other side of the cell door.

"That's right, get mad," she taunts, leaning forward, bringing my attention back to her. "And I haven't even gotten to the best part yet."

"Oh, I think you've hit the highlights," I snarl, my wrists now bleeding as I fight against the chains that hold me to this chair. Every instinct in my body screams to attack, to rip her heart out with my bare hands.

"Nuh-uh-uh, snowflake. I've stolen something else that you don't even know about," she smirks, right before grasping either side of my head with her hands and plunging me into darkness once more.

The next thing I know I'm walking up the front porch steps to my house, the one that I burned down over a month ago. There are noises around the periphery – angry shouts and screams – but I'm transfixed by Damon's appearance. His head is bowed as he shuts the front door behind him, but I can see the contemplative expression on his face.

"What are you doing here?" I – no, Katherine – asks. I vaguely grasp that this must be a memory that she's showing me. I suppose that I was weak enough from the vervain and the blood loss for her to slither her way into my mind.

"A failed and feeble attempt at doing the right thing," Damon answers, drawing my focus back to him, and I wonder when this took place.

"Which was?" she sighs.

"It's not important. Let me take this for you," he replies, and as he takes the bags from her arms, I hear the crinkle of chiffon and silk and catch the whiff of smoke on his clothes. Understanding dawns, I know the when now.

Founder's Day, last year.

"Thank you," Katherine says. She's keeping her replies short, simple, no doubt hoping to continue this ruse, searching for clues and information in his reactions. That's what she does. She finds a weakness and manipulates it to her advantage.

But then Damon is speaking again, so I quiet my growing ire with her and listen.

"You know I came to this town wanting to destroy it. Tonight, I found myself wanting to protect it. How does that happen?"

I can tell by the way his eyes dart everywhere and how his hands fidget nervously with his daylight ring that he's confused. He cares, and it's been so long that he doesn't know how to handle it, what to do with it, or what it all means. "I'm not a hero, Elena. I don't do good. It's not in me."

And I want to scream at him until he understands just how wrong he is. I want to tell him about all the things he'll do over the next year that will lead to the day when I will know with every fiber of my being that he will always save me. Despite all the spiteful words and hurtful things I've said and done to him, both before and after I flipped the switch. Even before and after I became a vampire. He is a hero. There is more 'good' in him than he could ever imagine.

"Maybe it is," Katherine answers in my stead.

"No. Nah, it's reserved for my brother and you and Bonnie, who, even though she has every reason to hate me, still helped Stefan save me."

"Why do you sound so surprised?" She's prying now. She's spotted his weakness, and she's moving in for the kill.

"Because she did it for you," he answers, finally meeting her gaze, "which means that somewhere along the way, you decided that I was worth saving, and I wanted to thank you for that."

"You're welcome," she replies, coyly. And my rage is nearly blinding.

Leaning in, Damon kisses her gently on the cheek, and when he pulls back, I see in those conflicted blue eyes all that I denied him for so long, all the reasons why he doubted my love for him. Slowly, tentatively, he closes the distance between them, his eyes constantly flickering back and forth between her eyes and her lips, asking permission and expecting her to recoil at any moment. Their first kiss is chaste, and a tingle runs up my spine at the memory of the kisses we have shared since. He gives her the chance to pull away, and when she doesn't, their kiss becomes unlike any of our later ones. It's urgent and cautious, hopeful and desperate. His kiss hides nothing, he's pouring his heart out, but he's making this confession, unwittingly, to an imposter that will turn it into tragedy.

The front door opens, and then, in the next instant, we're at the Boarding House. He's looking at me – no, at her – with wide, earnest, adoring eyes, begging her to forget the past, to start over, if she'll answer him one question. He wants to know if she has ever loved him.

"It was always Stefan."

Her answer is a mirror image of the words I said to him later that night. A refrain that he's repeated to himself God only knows how many times. The reason he couldn't believe that my love for him was real – why he still can't.

And then I recall what Damon said to me that night, right before I'd uttered those damning words, right before he'd snapped my brother's neck and everything had gone to hell. He'd said that what we'd been doing meant something, that there was something going on between us and that I was a liar for pretending otherwise. He was right. I was a liar for denying what was so obvious then. I am a liar for claiming to feel nothing for him now.

And I want to vomit. Waves of emotions I can no longer suppress crash against my heart and my mind, and it's torture. Worse than the sun burning my skin, worse that the vervain coursing through my arteries, worse than the vertebrae in my neck snapping back together.

I am in agony for him, for the man who'd bared his soul to someone who would twist it in the worst possible way. And yet, at the same time, I am joyous because I finally know exactly what set off his downward spiral that night. I understand the full extent of the damage that both she and I have caused, the depth of the insecurities that lie buried beneath his clear blue eyes. I can fix this – us – now.

But the emotion that is front and center, threatening to drown out all the rest, is anger. I am seething mad at Katherine for stealing that moment – that first kiss – from us. And for stealing my family. For stealing my life.

"It's done," she shouts, and I'm back in my chair in the cell. Baring my fangs and lunging forward, I howl at the chains that keep me from my prey. Damon throws the lock and slings the cell door open, flashing to my side and holding me back, while Stefan stands guard in front of my treacherous ancestor.

"I'm going to kill you!" I scream at her, still tugging at my restraints while Damon futilely tries to calm me down.

"Good luck with that," Katherine taunts over Stefan's shoulder. "I've had Original vampires after me for five hundred years, and I'm still here. I don't think you have it in you, snowflake."

"Get her out of here!" Damon yells.

Grabbing Katherine by the arm, Stefan drags her out of the cell, slamming the door shut behind them. "You're welcome," she singsongs through the cell bars before turning and heading up the stairs.

A split second later, Damon is ripping off the chains and pulling me into his arms. We collapse onto the floor together, and he's holding me tighter than would have been humanly possible. Rocking me back and forth, he presses his lips against my matted hair and whispers apologies in my ear.

But I only have one thought running through my head, one emotion dominating all the rest. His words, said in jest after I'd pulled an arrow from his back, come to me and I let out a hysterical laugh because truer words have never been spoken.

_That bitch is dead._

**THE END**

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_**Confession time… That kiss at the end of Founder's Day is still my all time favorite TVD scene. It means so much for Damon's character, and it's not even really Elena! I wanted to find an original way to tackle it, and while I'm sure 4X21 will probably not go this direction, it was fun to play around with the idea. Hope you enjoyed it as well. Hit review and let me know!**_


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